National Security Agency director Mike Rogers visits Silicon Valley at least twice per year to keep tabs on technology development - and use it to recruit new talent. Although the federal government cannot match the extremely high salaries of the region, "we are going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff, things you probably aren't going to be able to do anywhere else," Rogers recently said while at Stanford University.

"I'm comfortable with what we do, with our partners," said Rogers, though that type of statement wouldn't be overly convincing to US citizens.

However, Mark Jaycox, Electronic Frontier Foundation legislative analyst, isn't completely convinced: "Unfortunately, Admiral Rogers hasn't yet engaged on many of the NSA's more egregious activities like disrupting national standards for encryption or the NSA's hacking of American companies' internal databases.

Rogers also leads the US Cyber Command, a growing department that the federal government wants to rely on to help prevent foreign-based cyberattacks.